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NASA Finds Earth’s Older and Bigger Cousin NASA announced that its Kepler mission has discovered a planet and star that closely resembles the Earth and our Sun. Some have even been calling the discovery of the exoplanet “Earth’s older and bigger cousin”. The planet and sun are part of the Kepler-452 system and are about […]

According to NASA, more than 1,000 extrasolar planets have been confirmed in recent years. There are also thousands more potential planets beyond our solar system that are waiting to be discovered. Now, an international group of astronomers think they may have found the first exomoon, or moon circling an exoplanet, some 1,800 light years away […]

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission stirred up excitement this week when mission officials announced they’d hit the proverbial jackpot – discovering and confirming a record 715 new planets orbiting 305 stars. Nearly 95 percent of these newly found planets are smaller than Neptune, but four are about 2.5 times bigger than Earth and are located within […]

A new study finds there could be about 60 billion Earth-sized habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs – the most common stars in our universe – in the Milky Way galaxy. That’s more than twice as many potentially habitable planets than was previously thought. The new report from two Chicago area universities finds that clouds surrounding […]

A malfunction could force an abrupt end to the Kepler Space Telescope’s planet-hunting mission. NASA received the unwelcome news last Sunday after discovering Kepler had malfunctioned and is currently operating in a self-protective “safe-mode” as it also did earlier this month. The US space agency made the news public this past Wednesday. It appears at […]

There are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds in our Milky Way galaxy, according to two new studies. Both groups of scientists used data from NASA’s Kepler mission to reach their conclusions, which were presented to the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California. The scientists found that the closer the planets are to their […]

The recent discovery of a four-star planet highlights the growing value of citizen scientists, non-professional enthusiasts – including hobbyists, educators and amateur scientists – who participate in scientific endeavors. The discovery of the extrasolar planet dubbed PH1, which orbits twin suns and is itself orbited by a second distant pair of stars, was made through the combined efforts […]

On Tuesday, June 5, people in most parts of the world have a good chance of witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event called the transit of Venus. It’s a planetary alignment which occurs when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and sun. For those of us here on Earth, it’ll look like a little […]